In March, Matt Cutts, the head of Google‘s web spam fighting team, promised that a Penguin update, designed to more effectively fight spam, was going to be available sometime later this year.

Fast-forward to the beginning of May and Cutts hasn’t disappointed. He has warned webmasters to expect a Penguin “hit” in the “next few weeks”. Here are Matt’s exact words in reply to a Twitter conversation:

@mrjamiedodd we do expect to Penguin 2.0 (next generation of Penguin) sometime in the next few weeks though.

The announcement came after there was speculation that a ranking update had already hit last week with many noticing a change to their website’s ranking. However, Matt put the rumors to rest by stating via Twitter that there was no Penguin update as of 10th May.

What is Penguin 2.0?
Good question…. Matt refers to it as the “next generation” of Penguin and it has been the source of much speculation since Matt mentioned it in March.

All we know is that if Matt went so far as to announce the impending update (which is unprecedented), then we can expect it to be quite a significant algorithm update. It’s certainly one of the most talked about Google changes to happen so far this year.

Courtney is an online marketing and communications specialist at ineedhits - a leading search engine marketing firm with over 16 years experience. Courtney has been living and breathing online marketing for over 5 years. She specializes in web and communication marketing, while providing news and opinion to online marketing communities.